1. Technical Field
This device relates to steam generators that are used to generate super healed steam for the production of electricity and the like. Conventional steam generators as found in nuclear installations, for example, utilize an outer pressure vessel with tubular pipes inside defining intake and discharge of a primary heat transfer fluid.
2. Description of Prior Art
Prior art devices of this type have relied on a variety of different design configurations using tube heat exchangers through which flow molten metal salts within a pressure vessel. Water supplied within the vessel chamber is heated and vaporized with output passage steam through a vertically positioned output. Other general configurations use multiple inner chambers to isolate and direct water flow around and about tubular bundles through which high temperature heat transfer material is circulated from a variety of heat sources, see for example U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,097,630, 3,545,412, 3,888,212, 3,812,825, 4,375,908 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,489,788.
In U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,097,630 and 3,545,412 steam generators are shown wherein molten metal salts are circulated through tube bundles within a pressure chamber generating saturated and super heated steam.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,888,212 and 3,812,825 use circulation of a heating material (liquid metal sodium) over multiple tubular bundles and coils through which water is supplied within a pressure vessel.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,375,908 U-tubes are positioned within a vessel divided by vertical separation into cold lines and hot lines respectively. A heating medium is circulated about the U-tube bundles extending from the cold line to the hot line through which water to be vaporized is pumped.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,489,788 defines a steam generator wherein a tube bundle within a pressure vessel is supplied with a heat carrier. Water is circulated about the bundle with the generated steam passing through multiple centrifuge separators to an outlet at the top of the vessel.